Schiavo’s Case: A National Debate

The text at hand highlights two contrasting attitudes towards mercy killing. Read it carefully, and then answer the questions set on it.Schiavo’s Case: A National Debate

1 The life and death of Terri Schiavo – intensely public, highly polarizing and played out around the clock on the Internet and television – has become a touchstone in American culture.2 Rarely have the forces of politics, religion and medicine collided so spectacularly, and with such potential for lasting effect.3 Schiavo, the profoundly incapacitated Florida woman whose family split over whether she would have preferred to live or die, forced Americans into a conversation about the end of life. Schiavo died Thursday, nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed.4 Her case raised questions about the proper role of government in private family decisions. But her legacy may be that she brought an intense dimension – the issue of death and dying – to the battle over what is known as “the culture of life.”5 Nearly 30 years after the parents of another brain-damaged woman, Karen Ann Quinlan, injected the phrase “right to die” into the lexicon as they fought to unplug her respirator, Schiavo’s case swung the pendulum in the other direction, pushing the debate toward what Wesley Smith, an author of books on bioethics, calls the “right to live.” “This is the counterrevolution,” said Smith, who has spent more than a decade challenging what he regards as the liberal assumptions of most bioethicists. “For many years, I have been frustrated at how difficult it is to bring these issues into a bright public discussion. Schiavo did it.”6 Experts say that unlike the Quinlan case, which established the concept that families can prevail over the state in end-of-life decisions, the Schiavo case created no major legal precedents. But it could well lead to new laws. Already, some states are considering more restricted end-of-life measures, like preventing the withdrawal of a feeding tube without explicit written directions.7 That troubles some medical ethicists and doctors.8 “I am concerned about the erosion of a very hard-won process of agreeing that these decisions belong inside families,” said Dr. Diane Meier, an expert in end-of-life care at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “We’ve always said that autonomy and self-determination do not undermine the infinite value of an individual life, that people have the right to control what is done to their own body. I think that is at risk.”9 For social conservatives, who argue that the holiness of life is more important than the quality of life, Schiavo came along at the right place and time, at a moment of their ascendancy in American politics. Among those conservative freshmen is Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, who prodded Congress to pass a bill allowing a federal court to review the Schiavo case, never dreaming that it would induce a violent reaction. Since the law was passed, public opinion polls have consistently shown that an overwhelming majority of Americans opposed the congressional action.10 “I’m still perplexed,” Martinez said, adding that he would press for a bill to let federal courts review all cases like Schiavo’s. “I am amazed by the attention and the passions that have been aroused by this. It may be an issue that touches families, that transcends the cultural wars.”11 Others say that far from transcending the cultural wars, Schiavo’s case landed smack in the middle of them.12 “It may be that her legacy is to set off an ongoing debate in American public policy about the sacredness of life and how we are going as a society to make decisions about when life begins, when it ends and what protections it ought to have,” said Gary Bauer, president of American Values, a conservative group. Bauer said he regarded Schiavo’s death as “the forcible taking of an innocent human life.”13 That same language flows through other debates that involve clashes of medicine, politics and religion, like the fights over abortion and embryonic stem cell research.14 Schiavo, who lingered for 15 years in what doctors describe as a “persistent inactive state,” managed to bring these ideas home in a deeply personal way. The husband Michael, painted by some as a villainous adulterer, sought to have her feeding tube withdrawn. And the parents Robert and Mary Schindler determined to keep their daughter alive.15 As the drama unfolded, anyone with a television set could watch Schiavo on video tape and make a judgment.16 “ The closest thing to it, but not quite as painful, are the debates about stem cell research,” said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, who became familiar with conservative politics. “But they deal with diseases that touch upon every family; not a single individual. This brought everything together in a way that made this issue very real to most Americans.”

Questions

A. Answer each of the following in 2 - 4 sentences of your own.

1. With reference to the first three paragraphs, describe the effects that Schiavo’s case had on her family and the American community as a whole. (Score:01) 2. With respect to their impact on the legal procedure, how do the cases of Quinlan and Schiavo differ? Justify your answer. (Score: 01) 3. How did Schiavo’s case contribute to Smith’s campaign? (Score:1.5) 4. Show whether Dr. Meier’s point of view agrees with that of the opposers or the advocates of mercy killing? (Score:01)

B. 1. How does the writer achieve credibility? (Score:01) 2. What is the thematic relation between Paragraphs 9 and 10? (Score:01)

C. Write a one-sentence summary of Paragraph 16. (Score:01)

D. The following statements are false because they misinterpret the writer’s ideas. Rewrite them correctly. (Score:1.5) 1. The action taken by the Congress to review the case of Schiavo gained sympathy on the part of the people. 2. The phrase “right to die” was injected by both parents of Quinlan and Schiavo.

E. What do the pronouns in bold type in Paragraphs 5, 7, 8 and 16 refer to? (Score:02)

Part Two: Writing (Score: 09/20) Some medical cases are so critical that they put a person’s life at stake (in danger). However, a number of such cases might be curable through persistence, patience, advanced treatment and some luck. Discuss the statement, and then focus on the critical case of a patient you have known, heard of, or read about who was able to survive his severe case through determination, willpower, and hope. Develop your answer in an essay of 250-300 words. Make sure that, in your introduction, you put your reader in the general atmosphere of your topic and clearly provide a thesis statement, and that each of your body paragraphs starts with a topic sentence which you back up with relevant supporting details. Draft, revise and proofread your essay. Your writing will be assessed for ideas, language, style and tidiness.(Score: 05 for ideas and organization, 03 for language and style, and 01 for tidiness and legible hand